I'm pretty sure unassigned seating has been proven to be the fastest way to load an aircraft in practice.
> what makes this less possible than it was back then?
I'm not sure, I'd guess there are controls in place now that were not in place then e.g. passenger manifest reconciliation for security, ID checks, etc.
Ryanair (European Southwest essentially) target 25 minutes. If there were a way to do if faster I think they'd have found it.
I probably wouldn't change it (the special priorities) given the choice, but it is mildly annoying when it feels like you're waiting in line for an extra 10 or 15 minutes because you're not pregnant, a veteran, a VIP, etc.
If they occasionally let a veteran or pregnant woman in that line who cares?
Either way, like I said, I probably wouldn't change it. It has no real impact on where I sit. It's just the whole making a slow, inconvenient, annoying process just that much slower, more annoying.
I would say they're the European equivalent of Spirit Airlines, or rather Spirit Airlines is the American equivalent of Ryanair.
Southwest is head and shoulders above both those carriers as far as customer experience goes (Two free carry ons (1 overhead item and one personal item), two FREE checked bags, free peanuts/almonds).
Is this really a selling point? A bag of $0.50 nuts to accompany a $500.00 ticket?
And in an industry characterized by extremely low margins a $0.50 bag of peanuts per person is definitely significant money out of their pocket.
The cheapest fare advertised on their homepage is £7.99, London Stansted to Strasbourg (15 August, debit card payment, carry-on luggage only).
A bag of nuts, according to the menu in their FAQ section, is €2.
Still, there's no chance they'll go easier on carry-on and checked baggage: for them, that's about minimising fuel usage and maximising profit.
I would disagree with this. My experience is of low-cost operators in Europe (Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizz etc.), and I believe their experiences have been the opposite. Whilst most of the carriers used to operate on an unassigned seating basis, with fees for reserved seating, now seating is 'randomly' assigned at online check-in (although if possible groups are sat together). You can still pay for reserved seating but the benefit is obviously a lot less now.
My anecdotal evidence is that this has massively quickened the boarding process. Before, there would be delays waiting for people to sort out their seating and luggage arrangements (families especially), now it is much less of an issue and turnaround times are quicker.
It's also possible that the massive increase in people taking only hand-luggage in recent years has been a factor, but I'm not sure.
This is also culture dependent. Nobody boards planes like a group of Japanese. Be that salarymen or high-schoolers on a school trip.
The rest of the world might board in more reasonable time if they got help to stand in line by their seat numbers (better yet, print seatnumber and an integer on the ticket - have people line up at the gate prior to boarding in accordance to the integer).
Would work except for the Scandinavians that'd consider themselves exempt... ;-)
On assigned seating flights, I've noticed plenty of people deliberately sitting in the wrong seat. They know their assigned seat is waiting for them so they might as well try to score a better one. In addition, there are the more reasonable people who find their seat then ask people to switch to be closer to friends etc. This all takes time.
Having to play the seat game is stressful (o hai nonchalant couple straddling the middle seat...), but certainly not as stressful as getting fondled by the blue shirted molesters or wondering if you'll get into an argument with a flight attendant who wants to gate check your electronics-laden carryon.
Whenever I've had to queue way in advance of boarding in order just not to be at the end of my line, I've wished for this sort of solution—but, every time, it seems to me that you'd just run into the trouble where the lower-numbered folks wouldn't all show up on time, and then you'd have to (1) find a way to insert them into the line, which seems like it would have to slow them down, or (2) put them at the back of the line, in which case the whole point of the numbering scheme would be lost and we'd be right back to lines forming long before they need to do so.
So, lets say a plane seat 100, 75 show up on time - seat them automatically when the show up at the gate according to preferences. Those that remain, get what remains when they arrive. Want your seat? Want to sit with your group? Be at the gate 10 minutes before boarding (or however long it takes people to line up).
At times they have taken this to a new low: upselling the benefit of sitting together. The seat assignment algorithm is probably optimizing profit, not retaining groups.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2014/07/30/airlines-and-parent...
The plane flew at about 20% capacity. That diagram showing all the seats except premium ones filled? Complete and utter bullshit. I got a refund in my email a couple days later; I can only assume due to my complaining to the flight attendant about the situation. And I haven't flown American since.